1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, a content management method, and a recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
The use of home network systems has advanced in recent years, and the usage case where the user connects a plurality of electronic devices through network in a household and shares content data among the devices is increasing. For instance, a recorder having a network storage server function has appeared, so that the content data of a television program recorded with the recorder can be transmitted to and reproduced by a reproducer, which is network connected to the recorder. Thus, in the home network system, the content data saved in a certain storage device (recorder) can be reproduced and viewed by another reproducer at a location distant from the storage device (see e.g., Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-10037).
FIG. 1 shows a configuration example of a home network system in the past. As shown in FIG. 1, in the home network system in the past, each storage device (e.g., home server 2, optical disc recorder 3) is connected in a star-form to a viewing device 1 such as a digital television receiver. That is, the viewing device 1 and the home server 2, as well as the viewing device 1 and the optical disc recorder 3 are respectively connected with a one-to-one network 4a, 4b and can communicate content data with each other. The home server 2 includes a hard disc drive (HDD) 2a for a storage unit, and the optical disc recorder 3 includes an HDD 3a and an optical disc drive 3b, where the content data is saved in each storage device 2, 3 in a distributed manner. When viewing the content data saved in the storage device 2, 3 with the viewing device 1 in such system, the content data is transferred from each storage device 2, 3 to the viewing device 1, and then content data is reproduced and displayed by the viewing device 1.